This invention relates to a material concentrator and is more particularly concerned with a process and apparatus for separating and collecting desired minerals, such as gold, from an aggregate mixture of materials.
Considerable effort has been devoted to apparatus and processes for separating and collecting valuable minerals. Certain of these processes require considerable amounts of water, require the handling of tremendous amounts of material or often require excessive amounts of undesirable particles to be transported along with the desired particles to areas whereby a concentrating operation can be performed. The prior art concentrating apparatus are heavy, bulky, complex in construction and not always dependable in operation.
There are many valuable mineral deposits located in remote regions whereby the economics of utilizing the prior art apparatus and processes do not allow these minerals to be obtained.
Further, the prior art apparatus does not offer suitable means for concentrating fine particles to collect the valuable minerals and the tremendous cost of trying to collect the desired minerals overrides the value of those minerals obtained.